This Norman (or Viking) axe man holds a Danish style battle axe. Vikings were also called ‘Norman’ — men of the north — by the Dark Ages French. A large group of Vikings occupied and settled on the north-western coast of France in what became Normandy. This is the region from which many of the French settlers to New France came in the 17th century. It is also where the Canadian Army landed on D-Day on 6 June 1944. Print after Viollet-Leduc from the Bayeux tapestry.

In the early years of the 11th century, the first Europeans to set foot in North America arrived on the shores of modern day L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. These Scandinavians, collectively known as the Norse, had travelled west from their colonies in Iceland and Greenland. They had not come to raid, but to cut timber, hunt and explore the unknown wilderness they called Vinland.